Public Service Announcement...

[ajntornj]

Shamelessly cadged from aussiedave because he:-
a)said everything that I wanted to, and
b)writes better than wot I do.

DOING YOUR DUTY...and I seriously fucking mean it. This is your duty. Yes, you, reading this now. I'm not going to mince words or be diplomatic

Comments

[aussiedave]

- Forgive me if I misread the intention of "if I were so inclined." Was I wrong?

- And forgive me if I assumed that you don't vote, given that you are stridently arguing that it is pointless to vote. :)

- I was expressing myself in hyperbole for effect, but I wouldn't have said my argument was wholly disingenuous. You've said that voting patterns don't change; and yet governments rarely remain in power in this country for more than three terms. Now, that gives a swing in popular opinion of about once every twelve-to-fifteen years, which is reasonably staid, but it's hardly static, and swings in this country have amounted to more than a hundred seats changing hands in one election before now. It may also mean that the majority of voters are unchanging in their views, while a minority of marginal voters decide the outcome of each election, but that just reinforces the value of voting if you belong to the margin.

- I didn't say that there's no value in people voting. I acknowledged that one person can't realistically affect the outcome of an election. My concern is that if one vote is meaningless, that doesn't make thirty-thousand votes thirty-thousand times as meaningless. The more people who vote a particular way, the more likely they are to affect the outcome of an election. And it's the marginal voters - the people with no strong history one way or another, the ones who tend to create swings - who I most often hear saying there's no point voting.

- They self-select by choosing to vote, of course. And, as you say, it's no bad thing that the people most likely to vote are the people who care most, but likening a self-selecting voting populace to a stastically-valid sample is meaningless. No formal selection or standardisation process has been undertaken. It doesn't reflect the populace. In that case, and in the absence of a formal sampling system, I will be happier that the majority of the population is represented the closer to an (admittedly impossible) 100% turnout we get.

- Again, I apologise if I misconstrued your argument against voting as a statement that you don't vote. Why are you arguing against voting? Do you find that you frequently take part in exercises that you argue against?

And sufficient for what? Unnecessary for what? Sure, an election was held, a representative was selected, and because we gave everyone a chance to choose, we assume that the majority of people either back the elected representative or are happy either way. But it's fantastically arbitrary.

My constituency last saw a Tory victory by 475 votes. Thirty thousand people didn't turn out to vote. How confident are you that, out of those those thirty-thousand people, there aren't 476 more Labour supporters than Tory supporters? What if the wrong guy was chosen?

[ajntornj]

Blimey, I get stuck in Hamburg for a few days due to a volcano and look what happens...

Give me a while to get my mind back into the real world and then I'll try and join in again....